A NEW LOOK

A NEW LOOK

noticed a change to our cover design. As we announced in the January issue, the new cover gives us more room to describe what’s inside the magazine. In this issue, we’re changing the inside also. We hope you like the new layout you’ll find in this month’s issue. I’m excited by the new design, and I hope you are too. The first thing you’ll notice in this month’s issue is a change to the way we handle the lead image that appears at the beginning of each article. Instead of beginning the article with a small, rectangular image of something like a dinner table or sleeping cat, we are letting the lead image spill across the page a bit more. The result is a freer and bolder swath of color sweeping across the beginning of each article. The first reason for this change is that it looks pretty. But, in fact, this freer use of the image also offers some technical benefits that may not be apparent to the untrained eye. These benefits are related to the arrangement of elements on the page. The new approach should make it simpler and more efficient to lay out an article.

Graphic artists often face the problem of turning a photograph into an image that will tile over a larger surface. This task is not as easy as it sounds, but if you’re up for the challenge, this tutorial will give you a first-hand look at some advanced tools in the GIMP toolkit.